The portion of female corporate directors has been stuck at
about 16 percent in the U.S., in part because board members can
hold their positions for decades, Mulcahy said at a conference
sponsored by the Women’s Forum Inc. of New York yesterday. That
leaves little opportunity for new blood, she said.

With term limits, “your pool would inevitably be more
diverse,” Mulcahy said. “That’s a very obvious reason this
isn’t working,” she said, referring to slow progress in U.S.
corporate efforts to narrow the gender gap.

The number of women in boardrooms has increased worldwide
since the end of 2005 as countries instituted quotas and
companies including Facebook Inc. (FB) added female directors after
drawing criticism for a lack of gender diversity. Still, the
U.S. lags countries including Sweden and Norway. The latter
started a mandate in 2003 and has reached its 40 percent quota.

Helena Morrissey, CEO of Newton Investment Management in
London, started the 30 Percent Club in the U.K. to press
companies to employ that many female directors by 2015, up from
12 percent in 2010. Morrissey, who spoke to the crowd of about
200 women and men at the conference, said 55 percent of new
board appointments in the last six months in the U.K. were
women. That compares with about 13 percent in 2010.

Board Members

Two terms of three years are typical for U.K. board
members, she said. ‘It’s more of a job for life in the U.S.’’

The Women’s Forum asks executive search firms and board-
nominating committees to sponsor women and enroll them on its
database which companies can use to consider potential board
candidates.

Some investors are directly asking companies to add women
to their boards. Anne Sheehan, director of corporate governance
at the California State Teachers’ Retirement System said she
wrote a letter to Facebook urging it to add a woman to their
board. In June, the world’s largest social networking service
appointed Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg as its first
female director.

Gender Equality

Still, Ed Kangas, the former CEO of Deloitte Touche
Tohmatsu who said he’s been on at least 10 boards, has “never
heard an investor even whisper about diversity ever,” he said
at the event.

Women made up 16.1 percent of U.S. directors according to a
report this year by Catalyst, a nonprofit group that aims to
expand women’s business opportunity. That compares with 27.3
percent in Sweden, 24.5 percent in Finland and less than 1
percent in Japan, according to Catalyst.

Women often aren’t considered for boards unless they have
prior board experience, Dublon said. Executives should focus
first on moving women into positions running business units, she
said.

“Boards are the tail of one’s professional career,”
Dublon said. “We’re trying to force the increase without having
more people in executive management.”

Spain Target

In Europe, some 13.7 percent of board seats in the European
Union are occupied by women, after a 1.9 percentage point
increase between October 2010 and January, the EU said in March.
EU justice chief Viviane Reding is seeking to increase female
board members to 30 percent by 2015 and 40 percent by 2020.

Spain has a target for 40 percent of female representation
on large company boards by 2015, and France passed a law last
year to impose a 20 percent quota by 2014 and 40 percent by 2017
for companies with at least 500 employees and annual sales of 50
million euros ($65 million).

Shares of companies with a market capitalization of more
than $10 billion and with women board members outperformed
comparable businesses with all-male boards by 26 percent
worldwide over a period of six years, according to a report by
the Credit Suisse Research Institute in August. The institute
was created in 2008 to analyze trends expected to affect global
markets.

Companies with women on their boards also performed better
in challenging markets than those with all-male boards,
according to the study, suggesting that mixing genders may
temper risky investment moves and increase return on equity.

The research, which includes data from 2,360 companies,
shows a greater correlation between stock performance and the
presence of women on the board after the financial crisis
started four years ago. Globally, female board representation
increased to 59 percent last year from 41 percent at the end of
2005, according to the report.